Self portrait of Joni Mitchell against the scrubland.

In 'Come In From The Cold' video of her promo videos, Joni says: These pictures were taken in Palm Desert when I attempted to quit smoking. Since I'd been smoking since I was 9 years old I decided that in order to find the non-smoker in myself I had to return to the age of 8. So every morning early I would get up, throw on my shorts, grab my camera and wander as far away from civilisation as I could into the desert. That spring was a spectacular report and flowers that hadn't bloomed in seasons and seasons, and old timers hadn't seen, poked out of the earth... as a result migrating butterflies from Mexico that never stopped in this particular spot came down and so everywhere I went I was accompanied by a flock of butterflies. And it was really kind of magical. The pictures that I took there are very strange to some people, they see them as slightly horrific, getting more and more mask-like as I turn into tumbleweeds and foliage (laughs). I call this whole thing now 'The Seer in The Seen' so that you shoot what you see and then you turn the camera back upon yourself or a piece of yourself, your hand, your foot your shadow, so that always there is a bit of a self portrait, its a piece of the photographer and what the vision is, in that way it's more like Cubism, you're getting more of an all-the-way-around picture than a flat outward, your getting outward plus.